When staff share what draws them to this work and to our mission, it’s often a desire to offer support and share hope. As we work together to fulfill our mission to share the love of Jesus Christ, meet human needs, and be a transforming influence in the communities of our world, welcoming everyone who comes through our doors is our starting point.
We walk alongside people experiencing homelessness with dignity, respect, and care – not as cases to be managed, but as people to be welcomed.
Our missional focus this year is simple: to practice welcome in small, tangible ways every day.
You may be thinking, “yes, yes – we value welcome, we always have.”
And that’s the point. Mission Week offers us an opportunity to reorient ourselves with a simple, yet important reminder: to notice the power of welcome as we continue doing the work we are already doing.
Welcome is something we extend, and it is also something we enter into.
It may start with how we greet someone, but it continues in how we listen, how we make decisions, how we hold compassion alongside accountability, and how we show up, day after day. Welcome creates the opportunity for safety, trust, and change to begin. It sets the tone for the relationships we build and shapes the culture we foster at our sites, with our residents, clients, and co-workers.
Welcome is not always easy.
It asks something of us – patience, time, humility, creativity, and sometimes even more patience – especially when systems are stretched, disparities grow, and those we’re aiming to welcome arrive feeling frustrated, angry, hopeless, or unworthy. Practicing welcome invites us to get curious where we might normally be critical, to sit in the tension of a moment instead of rushing through, and to apologize and repair when we’d rather ignore.
How we do this work matters just as much as what we do.
When we embody our mission well, people feel seen, valued, and not alone – and so do we! Each time we lean into welcome, there are ripples of transformation that can extend beyond what we can see. Those ripples tend to show up quietly: someone choosing to come back tomorrow, a case plan that holds through a hard moment, or someone offering to shovel snow just because they feel a sense of belonging and gratitude.
Since the impact of welcome doesn’t always come with bells and whistles, our Mission Week focus reminds us to notice it – to see where welcome is already shaping our work and relationships.
As we center welcome this year, think about:
– What was a moment that reminded me why welcome matters?
– Have there been moments when I’ve found it difficult to practice welcome in the past?
– What’s one change I can make to practice welcome more intentionally?
– Who might experience our work differently because of it?
Let’s notice and lean into welcome as we strive to embody our mission this year.
Erin
It’s about the ripples, not the splash.
Changing the conversation for good by being the pebble in the pond.
Interrupting the normal flow with a pause.
Creating fresh sight with questions, not answers.
Birthing new stories about how things are that shift how we talk.
Together becoming the change we want to see.